Inerrancy & special-pleading

Unbelievers have a rather revealing habit. They begin by raising various objections to the faith.

Many of them seem to sincerely believe that their objections are original and unanswerable.

It then comes as a rude surprise to them to find that a Christian opponent can field their “unanswerable” objections quite easily. No only did their objections prove to be considerably less than unanswerable, but they’ve been answered many times before.

At this point, the unbeliever reverses course. Instead of claiming that Christianity is incredible because it has no answers, the unbeliever spins around and says that Christianity is incredible because it has an answer for everything. We have too many answers rather than too few.

If we have no answers, then we’re guilty of fideism—but if we do have answers, then we’re guilty of special-pleading.

Now, let’s examine the charge of special-pleading. Why does the same Bible look so different to the errantist and the inerrantist? There are several reasons:

1.An errantist assumes that if the Bible were the word of God, there would be no problems.

2. Likewise, he judges the Bible by his first impression of the Bible. He takes his own cultural understanding as the frame of reference.

But for the inerrantist, this is an irrational expectation. The Bible takes the form of historical revelation. It was revealed at a particular place and time. It assumes more than it says. It takes for granted the common background knowledge of the day.

We call this the organic theory of inspiration.

From our distance, there are naturally going to be a number of obscurities in the record. From our distance, we must naturally make allowance for the literary conventions of the day.

So the inerrantist comes to the Bible with a completely different expectation of what he’s going to find.

3. An errantist takes a quantitative approach to inerrancy. He runs through the Bible and compiles a laundry list of every problem passage he can find.

Using this linear, cumulative approach, he can pile one difficulty atop another until he has pages and pages of “errors.”

If you think one miracle is improbable, then a hundred miracles are a hundred times more improbable.

So even if the inerrantist can explain each problem, the sheer weight of the challenge reduces his exercise to special-pleading.

4. By contrast, the inerrantist takes a qualitative approach to inerrancy. He classifies various phenomena. They fall into certain categories, viz. miracles, chronological differences, numerical differences, omissions, free citations, &c.

For the inerrantist, it isn’t a question of supplying a separate explanation for every individual difficulty. Rather, it’s a question of applying the same type of explanation to the same type of problem or pseudoproblem.

You don’t need to justify every single miracle. You only need to justify the possibility of the miraculous, along with the direct or indirect evidence for this particular miracle.

You don’t need to come up with a creative solution to every numerical difficulty. You only need to apply a few basic principles, such as textual criticism, or the literary convention of rounding off uneven sums.

You don’t need to account for every factual omission. You simply point out that historical reportage is necessarily selective.

You don’t need to reconstruct every chronological difference. You merely point out that different authors may employ different calendrical systems, or arrange their material topically rather than sequentially.

You don’t need to defend every free citation with a special explanation. You merely point out that Bible writers will often paraphrase their material as well as employ the customary citational formula of the day.

Where the errantist sees a mountain of mistakes, the inerrantist sees certain instances of certain generic phenomena that are explicable by certain generic considerations.

5.Is this special pleading?

It would only be special pleading if we were making an arbitrary exception for Scripture. Are we?

6.Ironically, it’s the errantist who tells us that the Bible is a Bronze Age writing. Well, if it’s a Bronze Age writing, then we should judge it by Bronze Age literary conventions, cultural allusions, calendrical systems, and transcriptional errors.

Far from indulging in special-pleading, the inerrantist has taken a page from the errantist. He is using errantist criteria to defend the inerrancy of Scripture.

7. As far as miracles are concerned, do we count them as many or one? Well, if we’re counting miracles, then there are many miracles in Scripture.

But if we’re accounting for miracles, then we count them as one, since the case for or against the miraculous does not turn on the specific possibility or probability of this or that miracle, but on the general possibility or probability of any miracle whatsoever.

And, once again, this is how the unbeliever has chosen to frame the issue. This is how Hume chose to frame the issue.

So the inerrantist is merely borrowing another page from the errantist. Defending the inerrancy of Scripture by appeal to errantist criteria.

8. Moreover, even if we were making an exception for Scripture, there’s nothing inherently arbitrary about making exceptions. We do this all the time.

I may well believe or disbelieve the very same report depending entirely on who the reporter is.

Say the same report is related by a notorious liar, a perfect stranger, or my very best friend. How I probabilify the report depends on who I hear it from.

If I heard it from the liar, I won’t believe it. If I heard it from a stranger, I may or may not believe it. If I heard it from my best friend, I will believe it.

Or, take two different reports. I will find an otherwise implausible report believable if it comes from a reliable source, whereas I’ll find an otherwise plausible report less believable coming from an unreliable source.

9.Finally, unbelievers say that believers are guilty of special pleading because we only look at one side of the evidence—the evidence supporting our faith. We are not open to the opposing view. We’ve made up our mind, and that’s that.

But, ironically, this is yet another case in which the believer borrows one more page from the unbeliever.

If I’m an unbeliever, then I have no incentive to question the edifice of secular humanism. For example, I have no incentive to question naturalistic evolution. Indeed, I have a disincentive to question naturalistic evolution.

It may have square wheels and a flat tire or two, but it’s the only wheel in town.

By contrast, if I’m a Christian, then I am, indeed, motivated to find flaws in naturalistic evolution and other pillars of the secular edifice.

And the closer I look, the more cracks I find in the foundation. The believer begins to assemble a cumulative case against atheism. The defeaters and undercutters begin to pile up in a crushing heap of ascending improbabilities erected over a foundation of nothingness.